15/07/2026
🥰 When 2 became 3 🥰
😢 Earlier this week my mum sadly passed away, leaving behind their beloved dog Dolly.
Dolly came to live with mum and dad, shortly after loosing their previous dog lizzie, to old age.
Despite dad having dogs all of his life, mum has never particularly been a dog lover. Every time we lost a dog mum would say that would be the last, and every time dad would return home a few weeks later, with a new dog he was rehoming. However, with Dolly things were different, and even more so, after the passing of my dad.
Dolly had mum wrapped around her paw. Mum would often worry about Dolly, telling me she was off her food, but would go on to tell me she was enjoying a Ginsters pasty and cream cakes as an alternative. They shared a single bed to sleep in, which mum would regularly complain that Dolly inhibited her movement, yet built her a step to help her get on, in her later years. Breakfast consisted of sharing a biscuit from mums bedside tin. Dolly was mums companion to the end, and we will now ensure we honour her just the same.
Dolly will spend whatever time she has left being loved and cared for by us. Although she knows our two dogs, she has fitted in like she’s been here forever. Within a short time she had developed a voice and knows the morning routine of garden patrol for any overnight visitors 🐈 🦅 🐁 followed by a chicken stick (not custard creams) 🤣 Aswell as finding her voice she is fashioning some kind of waistline, as we try and shed some of the extra 5 kgs that she’s acquired over the years. Initial sleeping arrangements of sleeping downstairs, due to her deteriorating sight, and having not navigated stairs for many years, lasted precisely 2 nights. Once she had found her newly acquired voice, she let us all know her thoughts on being isolated from her pals, so now spends the night bed hopping in whichever bed she finds comfortable, usually not her own.
Dad always said that without the dogs there was no purpose of getting out of bed in the morning, and it’s what kept him going well into his 80’s. A medium recently said to me that Dad walks with me every day with all of my 5 spirit dogs in tow, and until the day comes when that becomes 6, we will give her the love, care and attention that she deserves.
* True to form on the picture, Dolly doesn’t think much to sit and wait for a photo 🤣
